Seeing Jesus Through Visions and Dreams!

A few years ago, we brought a team of pastors and ministry leaders from Mexico to North Africa.  It was an eye-opening and paradigm-shifting experience being immersed in a Muslim country where the call to prayer was heard five times a day, some women were completely covered from head to foot while others walked around in Western clothing, and the mosques were filled inside and out with lines of men kneeling for prayer.  We had gone to serve and support our Mexican friends serving long-term in this country, and they had a business where they were able to live out the values of the Kingdom with their employees.

At their business, we met a young man who shared his story with us (in Arabic translated to Spanish with the help of our Mexican friends).  As a child, “Mohammad” (*name changed for security reasons) had received a book about Isa (Jesus) from a friend, which he read but quickly discarded because it spoke of Jesus as the Son of Allah, more than just a prophet, and Muslims believe that Jesus was simply a prophet like many others.  Mohammed told us, “In my country, you are born Muslim and to convert to some other religion means rejection, imprisonment and possibly death to the ‘unfaithful’ (translation).”  Years later, Mohammad had an eye-opening experience that changed his life completely!

One night when he was sleeping, a man dressed all in white appeared to him in a vision or dream and said, “I am the way, the truth and the life…Follow me!”  Mohammad was completely shaken and jumped out of bed, realizing that the man who had appeared to him was the very Isa he had once read about!  He immediately decided to learn more about this man, but when he told his family about his experience and his decision, they immediately rejected him and kicked him out of their home, in fear of what the authorities might say or do if they found out.  Overnight, Mohammad became homeless, without family, and at the risk of what could happen to him in his country.  Thankfully, his grandmother eventually took him in, and he began to seek more of Isa on his own.

Somehow by God’s grace, he encountered our Mexican friends who hired him at their local business and began sharing more about Isa with him, teaching him from the Book and helping him understand what it means to be a follower of Jesus.  Mohammad eventually accepted Isa into his heart and became one of his disciples.  He enrolled in college, got involved in a covert campus ministry at his university, and seeks to share Isa with his Muslim friends.  He knows the risks of sharing about Isa in his country, and our Mexican friends continued to meet with him until they were recently discovered and were forced to leave this country after years of working at their business and making disciples for Jesus.  The cost of following Jesus is very high in this country, but many who have decided to follow him as Savior and Lord have seen and experienced him in a way that is undeniable.

Pray for the believers in North Africa who are seeking to follow Isa in a religiously restrictive environment.  Pray that God would fill them with faith, power, courage and wisdom to be his disciples, and pray for many more sightings of Jesus through visions and dreams!

By: Worker, in Undisclosed Area